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      Trump Squeezes His Party on Domestic Policy Bill

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      The president visited the weekly meeting of House Republicans to make the case for the legislation and pressure members of his party to fall into line.President Trump on Tuesday huddled with House Republicans on Capitol Hill to urge them to unify around a wide-ranging bill to deliver his domestic agenda, ratcheting up the pressure for the party to overcome divisions that could sink the package.Joining Republicans at their weekly closed-door meeting, Mr. Trump praised Speaker Mike Johnson, who has been toiling to cobble together the votes to pass what the party has dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which they hope to bring to a vote by the end of the week.“I’m his biggest fan — I love this guy,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Johnson before the meeting. The speaker can afford to lose no more than three votes on the bill if all Democrats oppose it, as expected, and every lawmaker is present and voting.The president made it clear that he saw passage of the measure as a test of loyalty to him, saying he had been a “cheerleader” for the party, and warning that any holdouts “wouldn’t be a Republican much longer.”But he minimized the very real rifts within his party that could derail the measure, saying there were “one or two grandstanders” holding it up.That is not the case. Several Republican factions have expressed concern about the details of the sprawling bill, which would extend the 2017 tax cuts and eliminate taxes on tips and overtime pay; raise spending on the military and immigration enforcement; and cut Medicaid, food stamps, education and subsidies for clean energy to pay for some of it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Senate Advances Crypto Regulation Bill With Bipartisan Support

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      Democrats who had sided with the rest of their party last week to block the measure over concerns that President Trump could benefit dropped their objections. They argued that regulating the industry was urgent.The Senate on Monday revived a first-of-its-kind bill to regulate parts of the cryptocurrency industry, after a small number of Democrats who had joined the rest of their party in blocking the measure joined Republicans in allowing it to advance.The vote was 66 to 32 to move forward with the legislation, which would create a regulatory framework for stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency tied to the value of an existing asset, often the U.S. dollar. Sixteen Democrats joined the majority of Republicans in support, acting over the opposition of most others in their party, who were concerned that President Trump and his family were inappropriately profiting from crypto.The vote was a victory for the cryptocurrency industry, which has made significant advances in Washington with the backing of Mr. Trump and a bipartisan group of lawmakers. It suggested that the measure would have enough support to pass the Senate and potentially make it to Mr. Trump’s desk in short order. A parallel effort in the House has faced similar backlash from Democrats, who earlier this month blocked a hearing on the legislation but are unlikely to have the votes to prevent it from passing.In the Senate, a bloc of Democratic supporters had pressed in recent days to include stronger consumer protections and transparency requirements in the legislation, as well as provisions aimed at combating money laundering and terrorism financing.But the most animating worry for Democrats was that the legislation could enable the president and his family to profit by issuing their own stablecoins. Concerns over the Trump family’s involvement in the industry intensified after reporting by The New York Times showed how a firm associated with the president had recently become one of the most influential players in the industry.In a prolonged round of bipartisan negotiations over the bill, Republicans steadfastly refused to consider adding any provision to rein in Mr. Trump’s involvement in the industry, or make any modification that could interfere with his or his family’s ability to benefit.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden’s Interview With Hur Confirms What Many Suspected

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      The former president’s halting responses to questions by a special counsel show him exactly as a majority of Americans believed him to be — and as Democrats repeatedly insisted he was not.For much of his time in the White House, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. offered a quick rebuttal to those raising concerns about his age: “Watch me,” he said.Yet, in the end, it may be the sound of Mr. Biden’s own voice that proves what his aides worked furiously, and spent hundreds of millions of campaign dollars, to try to keep the public from seeing with its own eyes.The five-hour-and-10-minute audio recording of a special counsel’s interview with Mr. Biden on Oct. 8 and 9, 2023, shows a president struggling to recall dates and details, whose thoughts seem jumbled as he tries to recreate events that had occurred just a few years earlier.The information in the audio recording, which Axios published on Saturday, is not new. The 258-page transcript of the interview of Mr. Biden by Robert K. Hur, the special counsel who investigated his handling of classified documents, was released in March 2024. His report set off a political firestorm in the midst of the president’s re-election campaign.But the sound of Mr. Biden’s fragile voice and unsteady responses offers a revelation of its own. The Hur tapes reveal the president exactly as a majority of Americans believed him to be — and as Democrats repeatedly insisted he was not.In the days after Mr. Hur released his report, Democrats fanned out across the news media to vouch for the president, assuring the public of their eyewitness vantage point on his deep knowledge and sure-handed command of the nation and the world. He was “sharp” and at the “top of his game,” they said almost in unison. He was “focused, impressive, formidable and effective,” as Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia, one of the youngest leading Democrats, put it memorably. Biden administration officials declined to release the audio recording of his interview, asserting executive privilege.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Republican Revolt Reflects a Core Party Divide Over Spending and Debt

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      Whether the ultraconservatives dig in and force big changes to the megabill carrying President Trump’s agenda or capitulate, as they have in the past, will determine the fate of their party’s signature legislation.To a small but crucial group of hard-right House Republicans, the tax and spending cut package produced by their colleagues to deliver what President Trump calls the “big, beautiful bill” was nothing more than a homely cop-out.The handful of lawmakers who blocked their own party’s sprawling domestic policy measure from advancing out of a key committee on Friday acted out of a fundamentally different view of federal spending and debt than the rest of the G.O.P. They are single-mindedly focused on slashing deficits by restructuring the government to dramatically scale back social programs, whatever the political consequences.With their party in control of the House, Senate and White House, they view their fellow Republicans as timid, squandering a golden opportunity to turn the government’s finances around in a long overdue course correction. Instead, they see Republican leaders, catering to swing district members worried about their re-election, delivering a half-measure that, as far as the hard-liners are concerned, falls woefully short on cuts — and the ones it did make were gimmicky.“I’m not going to sit here and say that everything is hunky-dory,” Representative Chip Roy, Republican of Texas and one of the leading evangelists of deep spending cuts, said on Friday as he tore into his own party’s legislation. “This is the Budget Committee. We are supposed to do something to actually result in balanced budgets, but we’re not doing it.”It remains to be seen whether the anti-deficit fundamentalists are really dug in against the legislation or shopping for concessions that could allow them to claim a partial victory against deficit spending and still ultimately fall in line behind Mr. Trump. They have earned a reputation both for revolting against their own party at crucial moments and for backing down before their intransigence actually kills a top Republican priority — often without achieving what they initially demanded.But for a few days at least, the recalcitrance of Mr. Roy and his fellow deficit hawks, and their willingness to challenge a majority of their own party, has tied down the entire Republican legislative agenda.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Investigators See No Criminality by E.P.A. Officials in Case on Biden-Era Grants

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      A contentious investigation that questioned the legality of E.P.A. grants has found very little to suggest government employees violated the law.A politically fraught investigation opened by the Trump administration into a Biden-era Environmental Protection Agency grant program has so far failed to find meaningful evidence of criminality by government officials, according to people familiar with the matter.The criminal investigation, initiated by Ed Martin, then the interim U.S. attorney in Washington, was cheered by Republicans, who have made unsubstantiated claims that the multibillion-dollar program, intended to fund climate and clean energy initiatives, was a political slush fund. The program, part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, was one of President Biden’s most significant actions on the environment.Internal disagreements over the merits of the investigation raised alarms among current and former Justice Department officials, who were concerned that the Trump administration was misusing the vast power of federal law enforcement to discredit people, policies and programs President Trump disliked, such as clean energy projects.While the investigation of some entities that received money through the program is continuing, agents and prosecutors see little evidence of any criminal conduct by E.P.A. officials who oversaw the funding. The vendor portion of the inquiry has yet to yield any strong evidence of criminal conduct, according to people with knowledge of the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.Prosecutors and agents have shared their findings with senior political leaders at the Justice Department, according to people familiar with the matter.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Christopher Bond, Former Missouri Governor and U.S. Senator, Dies at 86

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      A Republican known as Kit, he was the state’s youngest governor. When he retired from Congress after four terms, he said he didn’t want to be the state’s oldest senator.Christopher S. Bond, who was Missouri’s youngest governor and the state’s first Republican governor since 1945 when he was elected in 1972, and who went on to serve four terms in the U.S. Senate, died on Tuesday in St. Louis. He was 86.His death was announced by Gov. Mike Kehoe, a fellow Republican. The announcement did not say where in St. Louis he died.Mr. Bond, known as Kit, was 31 in 1970 when he was elected state auditor, defeating a 17-year incumbent. He served from 1971 to 1973, when he became governor, having been elected in November 1972 at age 33. He was the first Republican to hold that position since Forrest C. Donnell left office in 1945.Mr. Bond was defeated for re-election, but he staged a comeback in 1980 by ousting Joseph P. Teasdale, the Democrat who had replaced him. He succeeded Thomas F. Eagleton, a Democrat, in the Senate in 1987 after Mr. Eagleton retired.His election to a fourth term in 2004 was the seventh time that Mr. Bond won statewide office — more than any other candidate in Missouri’s history.In 2009, he announced that he would not seek a fifth term in 2010.Mr. Bond during his second term as governor of Missouri. He served from 1973 to 1977 and again from 1981 to 1985.UPI/Bettmann Archive, via Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Interior Department Weighs Less Conservation, More Extraction

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      A leaked version of the department’s five-year strategic planning document favors privatization and economic returns from the nation’s public lands.The Trump administration is proposing a drastic reimagining of how public lands across the United States are used and managed, according to an Interior Department document leaked to the public in late April. The document, a draft of the department’s strategic plan for the next five years, downplays conservation in favor of an approach that seeks to maximize economic returns, namely through the extraction of oil, gas and other natural resources.“That’s a blueprint for industrializing the public lands,” said Taylor McKinnon, who works on preservation of Southwestern lands for the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit organization. “A separate question is whether they’re able to achieve that,” Mr. McKinnon said, vowing lawsuits from his group and others.Sweeping proposals are a species native to Washington, D.C., and many of them stand little chance of being realized. However, Donald J. Trump has begun his second term as president at a blistering pace, remaking or shuttering entire federal agencies with such speed that opponents have only recently found their footing.“I would take it every bit as seriously as I would take what is laid out in Project 2025,” said Jacob Malcom, who until recently headed the Interior Department’s office of policy analysis. Project 2025, a 900-page document issued in 2023 by the Heritage Foundation, has served as a blueprint for the Trump administration on a host of policy fronts — including in its approach to public lands. The section of Project 2025 dealing with the Interior Department was primarily written by William Perry Pendley, a conservative activist.Of the several goals laid out in the draft strategic plan — which was pointedly made public on April 22, when Earth Day is marked — “Restore American Prosperity” earns top billing. To achieve that aim, the Interior Department proposes to “open Alaska and other federal lands for mineral extraction,” “increase revenue from grazing, timber, critical minerals, gravel and other nonenergy sources” and “increase clean coal, oil and gas production through faster and easier permitting.”South Lake Tahoe, Calif.Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Republican Agenda Hits Familiar Obstacle: State and Local Taxes

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      A small group of Republicans are threatening to torpedo President Trump’s agenda over the state and local tax deduction, long a headache for both parties.It was perhaps inevitable that the Republican effort to pass a vast fiscal package this year would, at some point, get caught up in the thicket of the state and local tax deduction.After all, the deduction, often called SALT, has long had the potential to cause a political standoff. Many G.O.P. lawmakers abhor it and, in 2017, imposed a $10,000 limit on the amount of state and local taxes Americans can write off on their federal returns. But to pass a tax bill this year, the party will need the support of a motivated clutch of Republicans who have made lifting that cap the animating promise of their political careers.Those lawmakers, who represent high-tax states like New York and New Jersey where the deduction is cherished, say they are willing to tank the package over the issue. Representative Nick LaLota, Republican of New York, can already visualize voting against the bill.“There’s a green ‘yes’ button and there’s a red ‘no’ button to press. Come time, if there’s not enough SALT in this bill, I’m pressing the red ‘no’ button,” he said. “It is a hill I am willing to stake my entire congressional career on.”Attempts by House Republican leaders to reach a deal with members like Mr. LaLota yielded little progress this week, leaving the issue unresolved as G.O.P. lawmakers prepare to release the first draft of their tax bill next week. Along with Medicaid, the health care program for the poor that Republicans have targeted for cuts, the state and local tax deduction could determine the fate of the entire G.O.P. legislative agenda.That’s because any change to the current $10,000 limit would be incredibly expensive, threatening to swamp the overall Republican budget for tax cuts. Even a relatively modest change, like doubling the cap for married couples, would cost $230 billion over a decade, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. More generous alterations along the lines of what New York Republicans have demanded could surpass $1 trillion.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More